Family Bible Restoration/Conservation

This project required Restoring/Conserving a large leather Heirloom Family Bible. The spine was detached from the cover but otherwise in pretty good shape. I did a leather restoration/conservation reback which includes the following process. Dismantling the cover and spine. Removing the fly leaf marbled endsheet. Cleaning the spine. Adding new cloth hinges. Relining the spine with new headbands, mull, and a hollow back spine. Rebacking the spine with new leather. Putting up the hinges, relaying the fly leaf, and relaying the original spine.
www.book-restoration.com

Leather Conservation Reback

History of Nebraska, illustrated, 1882. This is a large binding that required a great deal of work. The leather spine was torn and the cloth boards were quite damaged. I did a Leather Conservation Reback and cosmetic repairs to the cloth boards and leather corners. The finished Binding came out very nicely.
www.book-restoration.com

Full Leather Fine Binding

This project consists of removing a cloth cover and rebinding the book with a new full leather fine binding with raised bands and 22k hand gold tooling.
www.book-restoration.com

Wizard of Oz Cloth Conservation Reback

I have been receiving alot of children's books recently for conservation/restoration. They are usually in terrible shape. This one wasn't too bad. I re-rounded the spine with strong hinges, relined the spine, fresh cloth hinges to match cloth cover, rebacked the spine and relayed the original spine. Good to go for a few more generations.
www.book-restoration.com

Musings of a Hermit Bookbinder

As I work at my bench this morning, creating handmade marbled endsheets and working on hand tooled 22k gold leather labels, I realize how obscure my work has become in 2010. The Fine Bindings I create are for the Greatest Generation, Silent Generation and Boomers. My generation, Gen X, barely knows what a fine leather binding is. My daughters generation, the Millenials and subsequent generations have no idea what Fine Bindings are. How many Fine Bookbinders are left on the planet at this point? Maybe 100, if that. I am reading a book about Easter Island, regarding the mysterious wooden tablets now located in Museums around the world, how in just a few short years, master craftsmen of a certain type can completely disappear. I appreciate how my teachers of the Craft, Maureen Duke, John Mitchell and Lester Capon, were brave in their last ditch effort to pass on their knowledge and skill by setting up a school in Surrey, England. One more generation was able to learn and continue an ancient knowledge. But now that we are in the Digital Age and natural resources are dwindling, why bother to continue? In a few short years all books will be read on hand held computers, libraries will disappear,every book of any signifigance will have been digitized, the book reading generations will be gone. I realize I am the last of the Fine Hand Bookbinders. There will be no need for us any longer. Our creations will become relics of a curious past, housed in Museums. Going into Fine Bookbinding 20 years ago, this thought never occured to me. Books were the only way of obtaining knowledge. Fine Bindings were the highest mode of preserving that knowledge. Strangely, I am not saddened by this turn of events. I am ready for the world to move forward.

Thoughts on New Bindings vs. Conservation/Restoration

If a bookbinder has been properly trained in the Art of Fine Bookbinding/Book Conservation they are usually able to pull of both types of Bindings with a high level of skill. You find though, that each Bookbinder has a preference to either Binding New Fine Bindings or resurrecting the original bindings with Conservation/Restoration. I have found there to be a distinct choice between the sexes. Most female binders lean towards conservation/restoration whereas males lean towards new bindings. If I may dip into the psyche of this pattern it makes perfect sense. Most women by nature are nurturers and want to take something that has been worn and misused and neglected and with a gentle hand, rebuild it, using all of its original parts back into a solid, beautiful, fully functioning artifact. Men, however, seem not to want to deal with all of the crumbling parts and would rather discard the original and start with a something fresh and new. I refer to myself as a Fine Bookbinder/Book Conservator because in my business there is a call for both kinds of work. I excell, however, at Conservation and find the work much more rewarding.
http://www.book-restoration.com

Traditional Hand Bound Fine Cloth Bindings on Modern Bibles

I get a lot of requests to save modern Bibles. They were usually purchased for $10 and have a short life because they are used so much. Also, because the covers are machine bound and the materials usually cost in the cents. I almost always choose to put on a new cover in cloth or leather. The goal is for the binding to last the length of the owners lifetime and then to be handed down to their children. I can rebind them in either cloth or full leather. People usually opt for cloth because of the $100 price tag. They receive new boards, headbands, mull, acidfree paper lining on the spine, the cloth is always something sturdy like a english buckram or canadian linen. They are a solid hardcover English Binding with excellent flexibility. I usually do a 22k gold hand tooled leather label and gold lines at head and tail of the spine. I try to save the original endsheets if possible as they usually have notes and scripture written all over them. http://www.book-restoration.com/